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Staunch US Intelligence Community defender Dian Feinstein comes to her senses.

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40hz:
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif), who has (till now) publicly defended and attempted to justify the DHS, CIA and NSA at every opportunity, has since had a change of heart. Amazing how her thinking changed once some of the government abuses she previously argued for got turned and used on her and her committee.



Here's Senator Feinstein in her own words:

Mar 11 2014
Statement on Intel Committee’s CIA Detention, Interrogation Report

Washington—Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding the committee’s study on the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program:

“Over the past week, there have been numerous press articles written about the Intelligence Committee’s oversight review of the Detention and Interrogation Program of the CIA, specifically press attention has focused on the CIA’s intrusion and search of the Senate Select Committee’s computers as well as the committee’s acquisition of a certain internal CIA document known as the Panetta Review.

I rise today to set the record straight and to provide a full accounting of the facts and history.

Let me say up front that I come to the Senate Floor reluctantly. Since January 15, 2014, when I was informed of the CIA’s search of this committee’s network, I have been trying to resolve this dispute in a discreet and respectful way. I have not commented in response to media requests for additional information on this matter. However, the increasing amount of inaccurate information circulating now cannot be allowed to stand unanswered...

<more>
--- End quote ---

When a bad situation becomes so egregious that even the most wilfully blind are forced to see, you know the the danger is both real and present. :tellme:

Vurbal:
I'll take this as a sign she's learned something as soon as she applies the same standard to my privacy as her own. After all, some animals are more equal than others.

Stoic Joker:
I'll take this as a sign she's learned something as soon as she applies the same standard to my privacy as her own. After all, some animals are more equal than others.-Vurbal (March 11, 2014, 02:08 PM)
--- End quote ---

Ouch!! (Now that's a really sharp stick)  :) But you are indeed right. :Thmbsup:

I just hope congress can put down their golf and yachting magazines long enough to get the ball rolling and push her report through declassification. We need a head - actually a bunch of them - on a stick to put this to bed with.

TaoPhoenix:
I'll take this as a sign she's learned something as soon as she applies the same standard to my privacy as her own. After all, some animals are more equal than others.
-Vurbal (March 11, 2014, 02:08 PM)
--- End quote ---

Some thoughts:

- Fair point Vurbal, but it looks to me like at least a step (of many needed) to eventually do something. Congress operates on momentum, and whether one side can sustain it and the other side can dissipate it. So there's still lots more to do, but since this is sitting at "www.feinstein.senate.gov/public", it's there to stay, as opposed to the extra smokescreens if it were some newspaper story that then later vanishes. So while nothing may happen yet, it needs this step *to* happen at all.

- "We have no way to determine who made the Internal Panetta Review documents available to the committee. Further, we don’t know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA, or intentionally by a whistle-blower."

I like DC because we get to analyze news from the IT angle. This statement looks like a "save someone's honor compromise". How do you not know where the documents came from, at least partially? From any of twelve angles - ip/other addresses, document signatures, maybe even upload logs? (It's a super ultra top secret database, and it doesn't stamp when someone uploads something into it?! So are we talking a security breach?! Nah, I'm going with my other theory here.)

- By reversing her position from "for" to "against" this stuff, other junior senators might decide to follow her lead. Even, if we had a "privacy candidate" in the 2016 election, even as a "1-topic-joke", it might raise the issue in people's minds.

Vurbal:
I'll take this as a sign she's learned something as soon as she applies the same standard to my privacy as her own. After all, some animals are more equal than others.
-Vurbal (March 11, 2014, 02:08 PM)
--- End quote ---

Some thoughts:

- Fair point Vurbal, but it looks to me like at least a step (of many needed) to eventually do something. Congress operates on momentum, and whether one side can sustain it and the other side can dissipate it. So there's still lots more to do, but since this is sitting at "www.feinstein.senate.gov/public", it's there to stay, as opposed to the extra smokescreens if it were some newspaper story that then later vanishes. So while nothing may happen yet, it needs this step *to* happen at all.

- "We have no way to determine who made the Internal Panetta Review documents available to the committee. Further, we don’t know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA, or intentionally by a whistle-blower."

I like DC because we get to analyze news from the IT angle. This statement looks like a "save someone's honor compromise". How do you not know where the documents came from, at least partially? From any of twelve angles - ip/other addresses, document signatures, maybe even upload logs? (It's a super ultra top secret database, and it doesn't stamp when someone uploads something into it?! So are we talking a security breach?! Nah, I'm going with my other theory here.)

- By reversing her position from "for" to "against" this stuff, other junior senators might decide to follow her lead. Even, if we had a "privacy candidate" in the 2016 election, even as a "1-topic-joke", it might raise the issue in people's minds.

-TaoPhoenix (March 11, 2014, 02:54 PM)
--- End quote ---

I don't disagree with any of that. I've argued all along that the correction for all this abuse of power is a natural and normal process of societal correction. I don't believe Diane Feinstein appreciates the irony of the situation or her own culpability in enabling it.

However I do see it as yet another stepping stone toward public recognition of the very real crisis we face. The more people like her complain about their rights being violated, the less weight her defense of the same violations against the public carry. As painfully slow as the beginning of this process is, at some point there will be a monumental shift in public opinion that seems to come out of nowhere.

Until then all we can do is continue drawing attention to it. As unlikely a solution as it seems, that's what has gotten us this far.

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